Yukon bush life

(Lou, Yukon) After a brief but glorious period of mobility we are stuck again. We had our second snowmachine, Piccolo, for almost two weeks before we broke it. We had just undertaken our longest journey of the winter so far on it, visiting friends who also live out in the bush. Big glacial mess We’d cut a new trail to circumvent the local glacier. The creek has not stopped overflowing and the glacier looks like a rather uninspiring ice sculpture plonked in a moat of slushy water. Our new trail forms a near vertical ramp down the bank then a rough ride over a pressure ridge and out onto the river. We weren’t sure we’d make it back up but the moat might have frozen in a couple of days, and if not we had ropes and a winch and could spend a tedious few hours pulling the whole damn lot up on our way back. Trying to get up the ramp on foot We decided Neil would ride down, then stop before the pressure ridge so we could knock out some of the worst ice chunks with an axe...

(Lou, Yukon) At last, we have a few inches of dusty snow. We’ve got the snow shoes down from the cabin wall and trundled the snowmachine off its logs. There’s not enough snow to run the machine far, but we were able to test out our new ramps on to the property. First trip down the new ramp And more importantly, up There’s a big improvement in the plumbing system. No more Jack and Jill up the hill from the creek with heavy pales of water. Ramp at waterhole bolstered with frozen in logs and snow Buckets can be dumped in the back of the machine and whizzed home with a roar and a cloud of filthy 2-stroke engine fumes. Almost as easy as getting it from a tap. Still trailing along We’ve been out on snow shoes brushing out an old trail we found. We hope to bypass some of the jumbled river ice by cutting across the apron of land next to us. Open lead in the river downstream from us It’s about 3 miles long and hard work with chainsaw, loppers and brush axe, b...